Crumb Quilt Scrappiness

I have been working on my crumb quilt lately. Now all the blocks are done and I need to decide the orientation of the blocks in the quilt, the size and number of blocks I want to use, and get them sewn together. I cannot wait to get this on my quilt frame and get in some practice on using my quilting frame.

I caught a candid photo of my friend in a class at the store. We've been having fun sewing at her home when I have some time off. I have really been enjoying these times of sewing, chatting and getting to know each other. It would be fun to develop a group of us who get together weekly for our own sewing/quilting time. The scrappy crumb quilt I've been working on these past few weeks is complete up to the point of sewing all the blocks together to form the quilt top. We laid the blocks out on the floor at her house today to get a feel for the final product. It looks pretty good all laid out like we did. It'll be nice to get it all sewn together and on my quilting frame. I want to use this as an opportunity to practice my stippling, meandering, and maybe a few other kinds of free motion sewing with my Pfaff Grand Quilter and frame.

This week has been cold and windy here on the upper plains. I went to Walmart the other day. Since it's at the edge of town (urban sprawl and all with the way they position their stores) the wind was whipping across the open fields. I was seeing tumbleweeds trapped under half the cars parked in their parking lot. The tumbleweeds have been blowing around quite a bit lately. While I was at my friend's house today we were looking out over her back yard to see quite a few tumble weeds had collected along her fence line. That's just another everyday thing this time of year where we live. I can't help but smile though.

Every time I think about tumble weeds I think of a woman I met once who was traveling through our area. She said she and a friend were crossing through this part of the state (from somewhere on the southeast part of the US) and were just fascinated by the tumble weeds (having heard about them from cowboy folklore of old). The woman she was traveling with was really into making crafts and had a wedding coming up. The theme was a cowboy type wedding and she wanted to collect tumble weeds to use as props for the wedding. She was planning to spray paint them gold and have them be part of the western staging for the theme of the wedding. As they were traveling they stopped along the highway whenever they saw a bunch of tumble weeds and were collecting them in the back seat of their car. They tried to jam as many of them in there as they could without damaging them. She was telling me they had their back seat jam packed with tumble weeds.

I just have to chuckle now every time I see the tumble weeds blowing across the plains. I always picture them spray painted gold as backdrops for scenery! Talk about an active imagination. I can't help it . . . it makes me chuckle. It makes me happy to think of someone finding something good out of tumbleweeds! What is considered here to be a weed and a hinderance is looked upon with delight by others. Go figure!